Fifty Shades Of Grey [2015] ★½

It was fun, admit it, to watch Sharon Stone in 1992’s “Basic Instinct”, getting Michael Douglas and the audience cross-eyed just by uncrossing her legs on a day she forgot to wear underwear. This one scene is sexier than anything you’ll see in “Fifty Shades of Grey”, the movie version of the “worldwide phenomenon” that made millions of women drool over its main character, Christian Grey. Here’s a boo for untruth in film promotion, aimed at the ad for the movie, starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, and featuring a line above the title saying, “Lose Control”. Now, maybe you’d like to hear the rest of that sentence, which goes, “…of your eyes and fall asleep”. Forget steam, it would take a blowtorch to burn off the “laughably bad” dialogue perpetrated by writer Kelly Marcel, from the novel by E.L James. In terms of plot, there’s almost nothing to say: Anastasia is a college senior who, through circumstance, ends up interviewing young billionaire Christian Grey for her school paper. The two click and start to hang out. From that moment on, the story is basically about Christian trying to convince Anastasia to allow him to tie her up and whip her and stuff. Yawn. She seems interested. But we’re definitely not. I blame the casting director, as Dornan and Johnson look like they shot each sex scene separately and were then digitally inserted back into the final product during post-production. As the images add up — hands being tied, clothes being ripped, the smirking Dorman being forced to act — my patience was being tested. And when it was all over, I breathed a sigh of relief. The punishment (pun intended) was finally over. The film’s lack of plot and tasteless sex scenes make its 3.5/10 imdb score (so far) sound suspiciously high. And anyone who wants to see more of “Fifty Shades of Grey” after reading this review is a masochist. My job here is done. Enjoy the punishment.